KARYNA MCGLYNN

Karyna McGlynn is the author of two chapbooks: Scorpionica
(New Michigan Press, 2007) and Alabama Steve (Destructible
Heart Press, 2008). Her poems and reviews appear in Gulf
Coast, Willow Springs, Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, CutBank
and Fence. A five-time Pushcart nominee and recipient of the
Hopwood Award for poetry, Karyna currently holds the Zell
Postgraduate Writing Fellowship at the University of Michigan
where she recently received her MFA. Go to her website here.

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Where There Should Be a Plant Stand, There Isn't

I hear people talking in the kitchen, but there's no way
to get to them; they've had three drinks too many.

The worst is my bedroom, which has been roped off
with yellow police tape. They've pulled up the carpet.

I think someone's been here—a smoker,
trying to bypass the now-defunct security system.

Through my window I see my sister step from her car.
She plans to confront me about the thing she can't yet know.

I slip back through the shotgun rooms, and once again
enter my mother's with its unheated waterbed.

In the left-hand drawer of her vanity, I know I can find
her expired pregnancy test with its indelible blue lines.

But, perhaps, like everything else, these are mutable details.
Shouting somewhere in the house now and I have to hurry.

If I take it out now, I might kill myself. If I leave it
I won't remember what I came here to do.






The Woman Who Stepped From the Black Lincoln

moved like my grandmother but the way she extended her foot

bones rowing—a delicate mannequin ankle borne into summer

lording it over the corn and manure—I had no time for dressing

she rose up in the dust storm eccentric from her eye-slick coffin

and greeted my mother like she'd just lost her load at St. Anne's

when I went to welcome her home she cut me short with a word

"Sorry" her hand cool as cheesecloth it brushed my dirty sternum

she said "I don't think I know you, no, we were never introduced"

what I saw wither back in the chrome tailpipe wasn't an invitation






The Amber Thawed, This Black Thing Scuttled Out

they pulled her legs apart
one said he smelled elderberry
one said he saw Vermont

I saw her
she sat on a low-slung Arabian
his white horsehairs fell out
there was only a rubber smudge

I saw them put a pistol under the horse's eye
I heard the crack of skull
someone said it was only the gun
someone said the horse was wooden

I saw wheels on his hooves
she wouldn't get off
they looped a rope around his neck
it came from between her legs
they pulled them both away

he had a squeaky wheel
she had a missing eye
there was something sticky
it was running down the horse
it wasn't blood

the men led on and on
there was no stable
the Indian blanket rubbed a hole in her thigh
the meat was grey inside
one of the men said he smelled burning tire
the other said he smelled karo syrup

she fastened her feet firm in the stirrups
she said oh sorry, oh sorry
with each step her wig kept slipping back
like a doily on the arm of a pink silk couch






A Red Tricycle in the Belly of the Pool

the live oak over the nursery got a disease
they could only save one limb
it wasn't surprising; it wasn't that kind of nursery

a girl rode her red tricycle around the bottom of the pool
the pool had no water; it hadn't rained

the girl kept smelling her hand
it smelled like honeywheat, or the inside of a girl's panties

someone said, race you
she nodded okay and pedaled like hell
after three laps no one had passed her

she looked over her shoulder, lost her balance
ripped her hands & knees on the blue concrete

the one limb on the live oak curved like a question
would she need stitches again

there was already ink under her skin & iodine on her tongue
or was it the other way around

she could see black thread bunching
sewing centipedes under her skin

her throat burned and she couldn't move her legs
it wasn't a tricycle
it was something she couldn't get her foot out from under

she hated to stop or lose her shoe and, I'm sorry
the pool was full of water

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